


Flagstaff

by Linden



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Pre-Series, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-23
Updated: 2014-09-23
Packaged: 2018-02-18 12:51:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2349053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Linden/pseuds/Linden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John tracked Sam down in Flagstaff, four days after he got home to find him gone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [【授权翻译】Flagstaff](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5950395) by [Milfoil_c](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Milfoil_c/pseuds/Milfoil_c)



**April 1998**

 

Stumbling down the last several yards of an overgrown trail to a rundown cabin, his flashlight worn down and dying, John Winchester was fairly certain he'd only rarely been this exhausted in his life. 

He'd been in the Smokies for more than a week now, tracking a nest of riftrunners that had taken four hikers in the past four months, and tonight he had nearly seventy-two hours in the rough, three dead monsters and seven miles of hard hiking behind him. His legs were sore, his ribs were bruised, his clothes were soaked with both sweat and rain, and all he'd been imagining for the past three hours was a hot shower, a hot meal, and about twenty-two hours of sleep, preferably in that order. And if there happened to be several shots of good whiskey and a cigarette or two somewhere in that line-up, that would be okay, too.

Clearing the treeline, he checked on the car, briefly (tires whole, windows unbroken), then grabbed his duffel out of the trunk and let himself into the small place a friend of Jim's kept stocked for hunters passing through. Dead on his feet, he tumbled into the small bathroom and then into the smaller shower, scrubbed off a week's worth of grime and sweat and God only knew what else, watched it swirl muddy down the drain. Jesus, it felt good to be clean. Hands against the wall and head bent, he stood for awhile under the spray, soaking in the heat, and didn’t get out until the shower started running cool. He'd dried off and rummaged out a soft tee and jeans and was looking for his socks when he saw his cell blinking red at the bottom of his bag. Sighing, he sat down on the toilet and flipped open his phone, called his voicemail and punched in his code, propped the phone between his shoulder and ear as he grabbed his socks and pulled them on over his still-damp feet.

 **You have twelve new messages** , the perky, irritating electronic voice told him, and John felt something cold grip his stomach. He'd been off the grid for ten days; twelve messages was— 

**First new message, received April 7th at 8:32 AM.**

_Mr. Winchester, this is Adelaide Renn calling from Slavens; your son Sam isn't in school this morning, and we haven't heard from you about his absence. Please call us when you have a chance._

**End of message. Next new message, received April 7th at 9:02 PM.**

_Dad?_ Dean's voice, as frightened as John had ever heard him; he was on his feet before he ever registered that he was moving.  _Dad I need you to call me back, okay, soon as you get this. I can't find Sammy. It's nine o'clock and he's not—Dad, he's not home and he's not at the library or the arcade, and no one in either place has seen him, and his phone is shut off and I don't—just call me, please, soon as you can. _

 **End of message.** **Next new message, received April 8th at 7:17 AM.**

_Dad, you gotta call me, please, please; Sammy's still not home and he never got to school yesterday. I went over first thing and they said that he’d never come in. And they swear that they called but I don't—I got nothin' on my phone and I can't find him and I don't know what to—Dad please, please, call me. I can't find Sam._

**End of message.**   **Next new message, received April 8th at 12:31 PM.**

_Dad, 's me again; I—my emergency cash is gone from my duffel, and I don't—_

There were eight more messages, all of them from Dean. John listened to them as he threw his gear into his duffel and his duffel into the car, and he was on the road in three and a half minutes, heading north and then west for Colorado. He punched the first number on speed dial as he got on 70; it was past midnight, but Dean picked up on the second ring, and he didn't sound as though he'd been sleeping.

'Dad.'

***

Dean met him at the door of their trailer twenty-two hours later, white-faced and hollow-eyed, his hands shaking with what John suspected was caffeine and panic both. His son told him, tersely, where he'd looked (everywhere) and what he'd done (everything). He'd bluffed his way into a dozen offices to check traffic and security cameras; hadn't called Bobby or Jim, knowing that they’d call him if Sam for some reason turned up at their doors;  _had_ called Sam's school, pretending to be John, to tell them that Sam had come down with a nasty infection that was going to keep him home for a few weeks, because a visit from CPS was the last thing they needed right now.

He hadn't been home for most of the twenty-four hours in which Sam had disappeared.

John looked at him for a long moment, in silence. Then: 'What?' he asked, softly, because the first rule, the first fucking rule, was that Dean kept his eyes on Sam.

Dean looked at him, miserable. 'I took a double shift at the plant. Alex was sick anyway and there was—there was this new pair of runnin' shoes Sammy wanted and with the extra cash I'd get I thought I could . . . anyway, he knew I was leaving before midnight, and that was—everything was fine; we had supper and he fell asleep on the couch around ten, and I just got a blanket and tucked him in there instead of waking him up when I left. I locked the door, Dad; I know I did, and I set the salt lines, and I just—after my second shift that afternoon I called Sammy around two to tell him I wouldn't be home right away. His phone was off, but I figured that was just because he was at _school_ —'

'Where were you?'

Dean's jaw tightened. 'Went home with Cindy,' he admitted, quietly. 'I fell asleep, after, and when I woke up it was already—'

John didn't remember moving. He would cling to that, later—that he hadn't made the conscious decision to strike his elder son, though in truth he wasn't certain whether that made it better or worse. And Dean didn't do a damn thing to defend himself, didn't try to block his fist, didn't try to dodge or duck it, was just looking up at him now from where he’d been knocked back onto their ratty couch, eyes wet and mouth bloody, and the worst thing— _the worst thing_ , the thing that brought sudden bile burning up into the back of John’s throat—was that there was nothing in his son's beautiful green eyes but guilt. No shock, no outrage, no anger at John, just guilt, as though Dean believed thoroughly and completely that he deserved what his father had just done. John forced himself to swallow before he vomited all over the worn carpet. Because he’d cracked both of his boys across the face before when they'd mouthed off to him, of course he had, but those had been  _slaps_ , Jesus, openhanded; he’d never _hit_ them, not the way he’d just hit Dean, angry, with a closed fist and all of his weight and training behind the blow, and he didn't—he hadn't—

Sick to his stomach, he left Dean, briefly, to rummage through the freezer of their small kitchen. He found half a bag of a frozen vegetable medley on the door (the brand Sam liked, which John rarely let them spring for, but Dean had been doing the shopping, these weeks that he'd been gone), wrapped it up in a ratty dish towel and took it with him back into the living room, where his son was sitting with his elbows on his knees and his dark blond head in his hands, breath coming quick and light and ragged.

John crouched down in front of him, pressed the cold bag gently against the bruise already darkening along his jaw. Dean flinched at the sudden cold, but he didn’t move away. After a moment John brought his other hand up to cup the other side of his son’s face, and Dean flinched at that, too; the ache it woke in John's chest was ragged and hollow and deep. He rubbed a thumb gently back and forth over his boy's cheek for a moment, apology silent but sincere, then slid a hand around the back of Dean’s head and tugged, very gently. His son made a soft, hurt sound and tilted forward to hide his face in the crook of John’s neck, like he’d used to as a little boy, whenever he’d been sad or scared or needed comfort. His face was wet, and his shoulders were shaking, and John knew that his bloody mouth wasn’t the cause of the tears.

He let his hand drift up to stroke his son’s short hair, gently.

‘We’ll find him,’ he promised, quietly. ‘Dean. We’ll find him.’


	2. Two

John tracked Sam down to Flagstaff, four days after he'd come home to find him gone. 

Had he not been worried about the strung-out wreck of his elder son beside him, nor plagued with nightmares about his younger son in a hollow grave, he suspected he would have been proud of how well Sam had covered his tracks. And it had, indeed, been Sam who’d covered them. Because for all of the terrifying possibilities Dean had been struggling to narrow down and deal with in Denver during the ten days he’d be gone, Sam hadn't gotten hurt, or trapped, or lured astray by a fucking wood sprite; he'd just run. He'd _run_ , and he'd done it well, and in the end it was only luck—chancy, unpredictable, unreliable luck—that had led them here, to a scattering of little cabins in Flagstaff a little after sunrise, where everything from the tiny porches to the roof shingles to the cheerful sign of  _Bartholomew's Bungalows_ looked worn but still somehow welcoming, all the same.

The sign tacked up to the door outside the main office promised the best apple pie in the state.

A flash of John’s FBI badge was enough to guarantee the enthusiastic cooperation of the elderly woman at the reception desk; she started nodding as soon as she saw Sam's picture. Yes, yes, that was absolutely the boy in cabin seven; he'd been here for almost two weeks, no trouble at all, such a sweetheart, was taking care of her son's dog—

Dean was out of the office as soon as she gave them the cabin number; John stayed long enough to grab the key from the woman and growl something about  _renting to minors_ before heading out after him, by which point Dean was already at the door of cabin seven with his lock picks out, and he was inside before John was halfway across the lot. John followed him in, quietly, a moment later.

The cabin was small, just two rooms, rundown but clean and comfortable, and Sam had kept it neat—dishes washed, fresh salt lines at the threshold and by the windows, Mr. Pibbs cans and Funyuns bags and a pizza box stacked carefully in the trash can by the door. There was a ticket to the Lowell Observatory pinned up by the table, and a postcard from Meteor Crater beside it; Sam had apparently been  _sightseeing_ during his little field trip, here, and John squeezed his eyes shut against the tide of both rage and bone-deep, overwhelming relief that was rising inside of him. Opened them again to look at his younger son, tucked up sound asleep on the couch, snug and content and utterly unaware that anyone else was in the room; he'd apparently fallen asleep watching television the night before, because the set was still on, the screen all snow. An old, sweet-looking retriever was lying on the rug beside him, looking up at Dean and thumping its tail madly against the worn carpet, but Dean had eyes for nothing in that room besides his little brother. 

‘Sam,’ he said, hoarsely.

Sam's eyes opened, slow and sleepy; he knuckled at them, briefly, like a little kid. ‘’m up,' he murmured, yawning, and then suddenly came all the way awake, visibly remembering where he was and that his older brother most certainly hadn't been with him the night before. He propped himself up on one elbow, swallowed once, looked up at them warily. Dean took half a step toward him, and John was uncertain whether he was about to shake his little brother senseless or wrap him up in his arms; but he stopped himself before he got close enough to touch, just stood looking at him for a long moment, hands shaking very slightly at his sides. The early sunlight pouring in lit up Sam's dark hair like a crown. 

‘ . . . Dean?’ Sam finally asked softly, because his brother wasn’t moving. He pushed his blanket down to his hips, slowly, swung his legs over the side of the couch to sit up. ‘Dean, are you o—’

‘You’re all right?’ There was something . . . off in Dean's voice, though John couldn't tell what; Sam apparently could, because there was suddenly something nervous and vulnerable and worried in his face. He said nothing in reply, just nodded, once, hesitantly.

Dean blew out a slow, careful breath.  'Then get your shit together,’ he said, quietly, ‘and get in the car,’ and then he went back out into the cool morning.

From where he stood near the door as Sam packed up, John could hear his older son retching around the side of the cabin, out of nerves or relief or exhaustion or any combination of the three, but he knew that Sam, tucking his clothes into a battered duffel, heard nothing at all. 

***

Dean was rinsing his mouth out with a slug of whiskey when they got outside. He took shotgun without ever so much as glancing at his brother, and he spent the next eleven hours asleep or looking steadily out the passenger window at the southern horizon, distant and blue, as they followed 40 from Arizona to New Mexico to Texas. He’d answer if John spoke to him (which John didn’t, often; guilt stoppered his throat every time he looked at the bruise bleeding dark from his son’s mouth along his jaw), but he said nothing at all when Sammy did. Sam’s voice had turned softer and more hesitant by the third time Dean ignored him, and was nothing more than a whisper by the fifth, accompanied by a hesitant brush of fingers along his brother’s shoulder, which Dean neither acknowledged nor twitched away from, as though he didn’t feel it at all. And so the day trundled on: John guilty; Dean quiet; Sam folding in on himself smaller and smaller in the backseat as Dean’s silence bled from morning to afternoon to evening, unbroken at rest stops and at toll plazas and in traffic jams alike. It was past 9:00 when they pulled off for the night in Oklahoma, at a Flying J truck stop with a motel that was advertising $39 rooms across the lot. They had burgers for a late dinner inside, though Dean ate only half of his; whether he weren’t hungry or his mouth too sore to eat, John wasn’t certain, and he didn’t know how to ask. Sam ate quietly, eyes on his brother, who steadfastly did not return his gaze.

Dean stopped poking at his food as John and Sam were finishing their meal. ‘I’ll go get a room,’ he said, chair making a long, angry shriek as he pushed it back over the worn linoleum. ‘Mastercard all right, Dad?’

John looked at him for a brief moment as he stood: beat-up and hollow-eyed with two days’ worth of stubble, he looked substantially older than nineteen, and certainly old enough to pass for the man whose name was stamped on the false credit card in his pocket. ‘S fine. We’ll meet you outside.’

Dean nodded again, shrugged back into his jacket, and was gone.

John watched Sam in silence as his son played with the pickle on his plate. Then: ‘There anything you feel like sayin’, Sam?' he asked, quietly. 'Something you want to get off your chest, maybe?’ 

Sam looked up at him, defiantly. ‘I’m not sorry,’ he announced.

John snorted, softly. ‘Oh, I know you’re not.’

‘Like you even care whether—’

‘You know what I care about, right now? I care that you put your brother through two weeks of not knowing whether you were alive or dead, is what I care about.’ He cocked his head a little, studying his younger son. ‘Do you remember what it was like,’ he asked, ‘waiting for him to come back when you were too young to hunt? Hmm? When you weren’t sure where he was, if he was hurt? Or even breathing? If he was bleeding out somewhere in an alley? You were always awake when we got back, Sam, always up, no matter how late it was. Wrapped yourself around your brother like an octopus every time we got home. You remember why?’

Sam said nothing, but something uneasy flickered in his eyes. He looked away from his father, reached for a fry on Dean’s plate; John caught hold of his wrist before he got there, pinned it to the plastic table with one big hand. ‘You put him through two weeks of that,’ he said, quietly, tightening his grip. ‘You’ve never been able to handle eight hours of it at a stretch without having a goddamned panic attack, Sam, and you let your brother live with it for two weeks. How often do you think he’s slept, since you ran off? Hmm? Eaten?’

Sam’s eyes flickered away from him again, this time to the parking lot, where, on the other side, Dean was emerging from the motel office. Even through the dusk and at a distance, the kid looked like five hundred miles of bad road. Sam’s throat clicked, dryly, as he swallowed. ‘That’s not—he knew I was okay; he had to; he—’

‘Called to tell him, did you? Sent him an e-mail?’

‘He taught me how to take care of myself!’

‘That what you thought?’ John asked. ‘That he knew you could take care of yourself, so when you just disappeared one day he wouldn’t care? Would just think, Well, hell, Sam can take care of himself, no need for me to worry?’

‘I—’

‘He was afraid you were dead,’ John said, sharply. ‘He was afraid that you were hurt somewhere, that you needed him and he couldn’t get to you, because he could not imagine any other reason you wouldn’t have come home. Did you expect him to just assume you'd gone off on a little field trip? It was only when he found out you'd changed your contact number at school from his phone to mine the day before you took off that he believed me when I said you'd run; he thought his cash had disappeared from his duffel because whoever had _broken in and taken you_ had taken it, too.'

'That's—'

'You remember the last time you saw your brother so exhausted and scared he cried, Sam? Do you? Because I frankly don’t, before this.’

There was a miserable flush creeping up his son’s neck, and the thin hand he had trapped beneath his was unsteady. ‘I didn’t—’

‘Don’t you dare tell me that you didn’t know.’ John’s voice was soft. ‘Don’t you dare. You know your brother. You know how much he loves you. And you never told him that you were all right. Forget letting him know where you were; you didn’t let him know you were alive. And I don’t . . .’ He huffed out a soft, disbelieving laugh, finally let go of his son’s arm, ran his hand back through his own dark hair. ‘You’ve always been selfish,’ he said, after a moment, looking across the table again at his son. ‘That’s my fault, as much as Dean’s; we’ve let you get away with shit all your life. But this . . . this was cruel, Sam. And Dean doesn’t deserve that from you. What he deserves is your love, and your loyalty, and your gratitude—but I know,’ he finished, very softly. ‘I know, son. You’re not sorry.’

Sam’s mouth was trembling. ‘Dad—’

The legs of John’s chair scraped against the floor as he pushed it back and stood. ‘You will wait for me here while I pay the bill,’ he said. ‘Move your ass out of that chair without permission, and I promise you that you will not like the consequences. Do you understand me?’

Sam dropped his eyes before the tears standing in them could fall. ‘Yessir,’ he whispered, and John left him there. Settled the bill, asked about opening times for breakfast, broke a five dollar bill for quarters for tomorrow's tolls. Turning away from the counter a long moment later, he looked over at his sons—Sam sitting with his head now in his hands, soft hair falling forward over his sweet face; Dean on the other side of the window at their car, fair skin bruised all along the left side of his jaw—and wondered how in the hell, from where they’d started in Lawrence, they had ended up like this.

*** 

Sam followed him silently out into the parking lot, too-big sleeves of his hoodie pulled down over his hands. Dean had a sleeping bag and John’s duffel and Sam’s stacked neatly on the roof of the car, his own slung over his shoulder, and was hauling their laundry bag from the trunk. He tossed John a room key, the metal of it smooth and worn. ‘We’re in eight,' he said. 'They’re gonna bring a cot by in about five minutes or so. And they knocked off ten bucks for the night because the heater’s busted; they can’t shut it off.’

John figured that it was better than God knew how many rooms they’d crashed in where they couldn’t get the heat turned _on_ , so he only nodded, tucked the key into his pocket, pulled his bag off the roof. Sam, beside the trunk, was looking up anxiously at his big brother, fingers twisting in his sleeves; Dean paid him no more attention than he had all day. The pain bleeding from both of them was a tangible thing, and John was aching with the feel of it.

‘I’m gonna do some laundry before I turn in,’ Dean said.

‘I could help,’ Sam offered immediately, softly. He reached for his brother’s sleeve. ‘Dean, please—’

Dean hefted the bag of their dirty clothes onto his other shoulder, pulled his wrist free from his little brother’s fingers. He nodded toward the bright lights of the truck stop. ‘Be in at the machines if you need me, Dad,’ he said, slamming the trunk shut. ‘Night,’ he added, and left.


	3. Three

John woke, after midnight, to the soft click of an opening door, and, as he opened his eyes, to the shadow of his son's slender back as Sam slipped through it. His stomach clenched, once, hard, in disbelief and fury and fear, before he saw Sam's bag still propped up against the far wall and shoes still piled beside his cot; the kid wasn’t running again, wherever he was going. The door snicked shut behind him.  John threw a glance over at Dean’s bed—empty—and then rolled silently to his feet in the too-warm room, moved over to the shadows near the open windows. Dean was sitting on the hood of the car outside, boots on the fender, one beer can empty on the pavement and another nearly so in his hand. Sam went padding over to him in just his boxers and tee shirt, feet bare on the rough gravel of the lot.  Dean didn’t so much as glance at him, didn’t say a word, only continued looking steadily out into the neon-broken dark of the parking lot and truck stop and highway. Sam paused by the driver’s door for a minute, uncertain—Sam, who had never before been uncertain of his welcome in his life— and then came around the front of the car to boost himself up hesitantly onto the hood beside his brother. The whippoorwills were loud and lonely in the long silence that followed.

‘D’you hate me?’ Sam finally asked, very softly, looking down at his hands.

Dean said nothing.

‘Dean, please,’ Sam whispered, voice breaking just a little.

For a long moment Dean didn’t reply. Then: ‘Hate what you did,’ he said at last, and took a last swig of beer. He tossed the empty to the pavement with the other. ‘Don’t hate you.’

‘Won’t talk to me.’

‘Don’t have much to say.’

‘Dean, I—’

‘Don’t,’ Dean replied, wearily. ‘Sam, just . . . just don’t.’

Sam managed to be quiet for all of seven seconds. ‘Look, I know—’

‘You don’t know shit.’

‘But I didn’t think—’

‘Oh, you thought, little brother,’ Dean interrupted, suddenly venomous, and John didn’t blame Sam for his flinch. He had heard his sons snipe, shout, and bitch at one another in what he thought was every possible combination across the highways in forty-eight states, but this was something new in Dean’s voice tonight, something dark and sharp and brittle, and Sam had no defenses against that from his brother, none. ‘You thought plenty. If you hadn’t _thought_ , Sam, you wouldn’t have changed your emergency contact number from my phone to Dad's so that I didn't know you weren't at school. If you hadn’t _thought_ , you wouldn’t have lifted the emergency cash out of my duffel. You know what I thought? Do you? I thought somethin’ had taken you, you little shit. Okay? I got back from the plant and I thought somethin’ had gotten into the trailer and fuckin’ _taken you_. And then I thought maybe you’d gone out somewhere and gotten hurt and couldn’t get back. It didn’t . . . I never even thought that you might have run off until . . .’ He pulled in a careful breath, scrubbed a hand across his face. ‘You didn’t even leave a goddamn note, Sam.’

Somewhere in the middle of that, Sam had tangled his fingers anxiously in the hem of Dean’s shirt, like he’d used to when he was little and in need of comfort or company; John wasn’t sure either boy was even aware of it. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said softly, in a voice that was far from steady. ‘I’m sorry, Dean, I’m really sorry, I am, I didn’t—’

Dean snorted an unhappy laugh. ‘Sorry that you didn’t leave a note, or sorry that we found you even without one? ‘Cause I am damn sure you ain’t sorry you left.’

‘I just—Dean, I just wanted to get away from Dad for a little while.'

John's heart cracked, quietly, in his chest. 

‘Dad was in Tennessee, Sam.’

‘But he was coming back soon.’ He looked down, fingers of his left hand still tangled in Dean's shirt, voice small and sad. 'And I . . . it had been nice, you know? With just—just us, in Denver. I was _happy_ , and I didn't . . . I didn’t want to listen to him tell me how much I'd fucked up this time while he'd been gone, okay? How I should've been working on my target practice instead of my science fair project and that soccer wasn't important and that . . . that me being in the play was a stupid waste of time. I just—I didn't want to hear it this time, so I—I thought . . . '

'You thought what?' Dean demanded, after his little brother had been silent for a moment. Hurt was bleeding through the anger in his voice. 'That you wanted to give me a fuckin' heart attack?  Cause let me tell you, Sam, you got that shit down, brother.'

'Dean, please, I'm . . . I'm sorry.'

Dean looked at him for a long moment, then snorted again. 'Yeah, well, that's just great, Sam. You're _sorry_. Good. I'll alert the fuckin' media.' Dean pushed himself off the car, breaking his brother’s hold. ‘Get back inside. I’m tired and I want to go to bed, and I am sure as fuck not leavin’ you out here alone.’

‘No, Dean, wait—’

Dean grabbed a fistful of his brother’s tee in his free hand and pulled him off the hood, steadied him dispassionately when he stumbled, and then gave him a push back toward the motel room door, followed him around the side of the car. ‘I said get back inside.’

Sam stood motionless for half a heartbeat before he moved—toward his brother, not back into the motel. He crowded close, fisted both hands in his brother’s shirt and dropped his forehead against his shoulder, and when Dean ground out, ‘Damn it, Sam,’ he didn’t step away. But neither did Dean, and after a moment or two John realized that there was an entire further conversation being carried on there in the curve of Sam’s shoulders and in the tension of his hands, in the tilt of Dean’s head and in the long straight line of his back—part of a language the two of them had shared since childhood, to the exclusion of the rest of the world.  Sam shifted a little on his bare feet, let go of Dean’s shirt to twine wiry arms around his ribs, clinging tight; Dean stood motionless for maybe another thirty seconds before he closed his eyes and blew out an exasperated, weary breath, then brought a hand up to cup the back of his brother’s head, Mary’s ring glinting in the light. In the harsh yellow glow of the parking lot lamps, his face was tired, still angry, and filled with love and hurt and rue; sighing, he leaned back against the car and pulled Sam with him, taking his brother’s light weight against his chest.

Neither of them spoke for several long moments, Sam’s face hidden against his brother’s shirt, Dean’s fingers buried in his soft hair, thumb rubbing gently at his scalp.

‘You’re a pain in my ass, you know that?’ Dean finally told him. ‘You’re a selfish, ungrateful, serious pain in my ass, and I swear to God if you ever disappear like that again I will break every bone in your body when I catch up to you. We clear?’

Sam nodded, wordless, and Dean wrapped his other arm around Sam’s shoulders. ‘You scared the crap out of me, Sammy,’ he whispered, and it wasn’t until Sam choked out, ‘I’m sorry,’ that John realized his younger son was in tears. ‘You take off somewhere, you fucking tell me where you’re going, you hear me?’ Dean continued, holding him close. ‘You don’t . . . you do not just leave me like that. Ever. I don’t care how pissed you are at Dad; I don’t care if you’re pissed at _me_ ; you do not just . . . vanish, into the goddamned wind. You got me?’

Sam nodded again.

‘You sure? Because I’m serious, Sam. You do this again and I will fuck you up when I find you.’

Sam snuffled. ‘You wouldn’t hurt me,’ he whispered.

Dean was silent for a moment. Then, ‘Yeah, well, I’d be really goddamned tempted,’ he said, and Sam made a soft huffling sound that might have been a laugh. He pushed a foot between both of his brother’s and pressed in closer against him; Dean tightened his arms around him and let him, and John was wholly and entirely unprepared for the cramp of hollow unease that he felt in his gut as he watched them. Neither of his sons had ever had much use for personal space around one another, and it certainly wasn’t the first time he’d seen Dean wrap his little brother up in his arms for comfort, but there was something . . . there was _something_ , here, something in the way that Dean’s mouth was buried in his brother’s hair and Sam's face was tucked against his collarbone, a gentleness all at odds with their usual rough affection that struck him as . . . as . . . he blinked, and shook his head, and told himself he was being ridiculous.  But they couldn’t just stand there outside like that, wrapped around one another with Sam barefoot and in nothing but a tee and worn boxers and Dean rubbing at his back; Sam wasn’t a little boy anymore, and no one looking at the two of them would have ever assumed that they were brothers. John had his mouth open to call out to them—what, he wasn’t sure—when Dean squeezed the back of Sam’s neck and gave his brother a gentle shove backwards to get him moving. ‘C’mon. You’re gonna freeze your ass off out here. You never heard of pants? Get the hell inside.’

Sam wiped at his wet face, rubbed his runny nose against his wrist like a little kid. ‘You coming?’

‘No, I figured I’d sleep on the hood tonight, Sam. Of course I’m comin’. Now move your ass.’

Sam bit his lip, looked up at his brother, and manifestly did not move his ass. ‘You still mad at me?’

‘I’m pissed at you, and I’m gonna be for awhile. You unclear about the direction of _inside_ , Sam?’

Sam shook his head, and then took a hesitant half-step forward anyway, raised a hand to touch Dean's bruised mouth, thin fingers butterfly-light against his brother's skin. 'What—'

Dean batted his hand away, gently, turned him around, started to frog-march him back toward the motel. 'Dude, it's just a bruise. I'm fine.'

Sam craned his neck to look back up at his brother. 'What happened?'

Dean quirked a half-smile at him, shrugged. ‘Turned out the lady had a husband,’ he lied, so lightly and easily that Sam rolled his eyes and believed him, even as John’s heart clenched, hard, in his chest. _You don’t deserve that boy_ , Bobby had told him once, angrily, and John supposed that he’d told the truth. Dean let his little brother go when they got to the curb; John stepped back away from the windows so that they didn’t see him standing in the shadows, and was lying down again by the time his sons eased back into the room. Eyes closed, breath steady, he listened to the soft swish of the sheets and the squeak of bedsprings as Dean settled into the other bed and Sam stretched out on top of his sleeping bag on the narrow cot, listened a few moments later to the cot creak, softly, and Sam’s footsteps shuffle across the worn carpet.

‘Dean?’ he whispered.

‘I'm sleepin'.’

‘Dean.’

Dean sighed, gustily, but John could hear him already moving, mattress creaking beneath him as he shifted.  ‘You snore and I’m kickin’ your ass out of this bed.'

‘I don’t snore,’ Sam insisted, both of them still whispering.

‘Dude, you give Bobby’s wood-chipper a run for its money. Now shut up and go to sleep.’

‘ . . . _you_ snore.’

John heard what he was fairly certain was the sound of his younger son getting smacked across the back of his head; it was quiet for a moment after, save for the soft squeaking of the bedsprings and the rustle of sheets. Then, weary and exasperated and fond:

‘Look, ‘f you’re gonna use me as a pillow, squirt, you’re gonna have to lie still.’

‘M _trying_. You’re taking up all the room.’

‘S a freakin’ _double_ , Sammy; how much room you think I got?’ 

‘More ‘n me.’

‘There’s a whole nice, creaky cot over there, ‘f you want it.’

‘Shut up.’ John heard the bed squeak again as the boys settled themselves more comfortably, tugged at the blankets and bitched softly at one another about them, and then there was nothing but his sons breathing soft and easy together in the dark. Finally, ‘Dean?’ Sam ventured. He sounded very young.

‘Yeah, Sammy.’

'I missed you,’ he said, so softly John almost didn’t hear him.

Dean said nothing for a moment. Then, clearing his throat softly: ‘Yeah, well.’ His voice was quiet and gruff. ‘You try not runnin’ off next time, you won’t have to miss me. See how that works?’

John could hear Sam’s small smile in his voice. ‘Yeah,’ he whispered.

‘Awesome. Now for fuck’s sake, little brother, shut up and go to sleep. I’m not gonna tell you again.’

John heard Sam’s breathing soften and slow not long after, heard Dean sigh and settle and follow him into sleep in a minute or two more. The room stayed quiet, its silence broken only by the steady hum of the heater, the occasional rush and thrum of a semi going by on the highway. John let his eyes flutter open, just a little. Dean was stretched out on his back with an arm around his little brother, Sam tucked up firmly against his side, dark head pillowed on Dean’s chest and thin fingers wrapped around Dean’s old amulet, their legs slotted together, warm and close, blankets pushed down around their hips. They were too old now to sleep tangled together like children, they really were, and any other night he would have woken them and sent Sam back to his cot, with a word to Dean in the morning that coddling his little brother would do neither of them any good on the battlefield. But with Sam cuddled close and curled half on top of him, Dean was—he was _sleeping­_ , deep and easy, the first John had seen of it in nearly a week, and the tightness around his eyes had eased and the furrows between his brows had smoothed, and John didn’t have the heart to wake him.

Light from the parking lot outside shone through the too-thin curtains of their room. John looked at his sons for a long while as they slept, really _looked_ , for the first time in a long time, and his heart hurt at what he saw: both of them too thin, Dean more so than Sam, clothes that had already been old when they’d gotten them now leaning toward threadbare; Dean’s forearm crisscrossed with thin scars from a werecat, his ring finger crooked from where it had twice been broken and reset, Sam’s smooth skin marred by an old, ugly welt from that shambler in Acadia, just visible now where his tee was rucked up over the bare hollow of his back from Dean’s hand. John tried to remember the last time he’d seen both of them unbruised, the last time the three of them had sat down for a meal that hadn’t come from a fast-food restaurant or out of a can, and he couldn’t. _Did_ remember, briefly, the gym teacher in Montana who’d called child protection services six months ago, shortly after a weekend hunt that had left Sam’s slim back marked up from his shoulders to his hips; remembered picking up a message from Dean several days later saying that they’d cleared out of Billings two steps ahead of the police and were in South Dakota at Bobby’s; remembered Sam’s outrage that he’d been pulled into the principal’s office to talk with a social worker who’d asked whether _Dean_ were the one who’d given him the bruises, remembered Dean’s worry about the two social workers who had shown up at their crappy rent-by-the-month motel room the same afternoon, wanting to talk to John (gone), wanting to take a look in their kitchen cabinets (nearly empty), wanting to take Sam.

John closed his eyes, wearily. He and Mary had spent hours, once, poring over cribs and playpens and car seats, so eager to choose whichever would best keep their sons safe, and he—he thought he was still doing that, thought he’d _been_ doing that, all these years, teaching his boys how to protect themselves and each other from all the evil that lived out there in the dark, but—

He looked at his sons again, curled up around one another in a strange bed in a cheap motel, scarred and weary and thin and so ridiculously, impossibly young, and he felt something cracking in his chest.

Maybe it was . . . maybe it was time to give this up.

He rolled the thought around in his mind for awhile, every last little thing in him that was a Marine and a husband both rebelling at it. But Sam had run away, for Chrissakes; Sammy had _run away_ , and so maybe it was time to just . . . just call it. Find a quiet corner of the country, settle down, turn his back on the dark and on all the evil in it, and salvage what he could of a normal life for his sons. It had been fourteen years, now—fourteen years, and he was no closer tonight to finding what had killed his wife than he had been standing in the ruins of his house with Missouri Moseley shaking beside him; and all he had to show for nearly a decade and a half of searching for it were seven open warrants in seven different states, a string of dead monsters at his back, and now a son who’d run seven hundred miles to get away from him.

He watched Sam stir just a little, watched Dean’s arm tighten around him by reflex, even in sleep. Yeah. Maybe it was time.

Because there _was_ time, still, to make it up to them, John knew. Sammy was only fourteen, three and a half years of high school still ahead of him; there was still time to get him settled in a school he liked, time to go watch his soccer games and his track meets, to meet his teachers, to do . . . whatever the hell it was ordinary fathers _did_ , with mouthy, too-brilliant smartasses of sons that they loved more than breathing. There was still time for Dean to go back to school if he wanted to, or for John to help him find good work if he didn’t; time for them both to spend afternoons tinkering with the car together just for the sheer pleasure of the work and the company, not because they had four hundred miles to cover in five hours and needed her running fast and clean, or because they’d mown down a werewolf and needed to get the blood out of the grille before morning. And God knew that if they ever parked themselves in one place for more than three months at a stretch, Dean would make some girl a fine, steady catch—and, someday, a fine, steady husband—because for all his cocky charm and smiles, it wasn’t in him to be disloyal, not to someone he loved.

It wouldn’t take much, John thought. It really wouldn’t take much; he was still a damn fine mechanic, and surely there was some small sleepy town somewhere in the heartland that needed one. They could find a real place to live—not a house, not yet, but an apartment somewhere, something clean and safe—could start a life where salt stayed on the table and the only things going bump in the night would be Dean sneaking his little brother back in after curfew, both of them un-bruised and well-fed and in clothes that had never belonged to anyone but them. If he gave up hunting, there was still time for all of that, and maybe . . .

Six months, he thought. He’d give himself six months—no, he’d give himself eight; he’d give himself until Christmas—and if between now and then all his leads on Mary’s killer ran cold, he’d take the boys to Bobby’s for the holidays, and ask the cranky bastard for help in getting them the hell out of this life. By Christmas.

. . . by next Christmas, at least; by next Christmas, for sure.

It took John a long while to fall asleep.


End file.
